With the rapid development of the mobile communication technology, there is a sharp increase in the use of various mobile communication devices (e.g., intelligent mobile phones, tablet computers or the like) as compared to the past. In order to provide excellent mobile communication services for users, mobile communication operators obtain licensed bands by biding for the licensed bands. Moreover, due to the increasing density of the mobile communication devices in recent years, the mobile communication operators further establish small cells in addition to macro cells to improve the wireless signal quality and enlarge the signal coverage so as to satisfy communication requirements of individual small areas.
When the radio signal interference around the small cell or the user equipment is serious, radio link failure (RLF) may occur between the user equipment and the small cell. To solve this problem, currently specialists and operators in the fourth generation long term evolution (4G LTE) mobile communication field have proposed the use of an unlicensed band to assist in the signal transmission (i.e., the Licensed Assisted Access). However, no agreement has yet been reached on how the small cell requests use of the unlicensed band resources and how the small cell obtains the configuration of the unlicensed band resource.
Accordingly, an urgent need exists in the art to provide an unlicensed band resource request and configuration mechanism based on the current 4G LTE standard so that the small cell performs data transmission with the mobile communication device through the unlicensed band resource.